New T-Shirt Design

Hey hey everyone, My friend, Colin, has started a really cool t-shirt company out of L.A. called L.A. NO Name and I've been asked to come up with some characters to go exclusively on their shirts, so of course I said yes. And here is the first one, which features a creature I call Spike, playing the guitar with his feet (he doesn't seem to have any arms or hands). If you're interested, you can purchase the shirts HERE! And make sure to check out their other cool shirts in their SHOP.

Hungry Thirsty Hippo

Here's a new character I threw together, I really like him.

HotDog On A Stick Possum

Here's a possum I drew recently that reflects my obsession with the girls that work at Hotdog On A Stick and wear those amazing uniforms. You go girls!

My Art Book Is Now Available

I've had a lot of people ask me lately if they could purchase the art book I put together last spring so I've finally decided to make it available for purchase on Blurb.com. It's a 40 page collection I put together of some of my favorite pieces and Blurb's printing is top notch. So, if any of you are interested in a weird collection of fine art, sketches, character designs, etc; CHECK IT OUT HERE!

New Stuff At Tertiary

Hey Hey! Life's been great for the ol' Poor Claymator. I finished animating "The Blind Date" and I've started pre-production on "The Walk," As well as working on some top-secret fun stuff. Anyway, make sure you catch all the new news at my new Tertiary Production Blog. See you all soon!

Character Sketches

Hey Everyone, I'm back, and since I obviously haven't done anything on the production the last three weeks, I figured I'd share some old character design sketches with you guys.Gonna be building sets this week and (cross your fingers) animate next week. Will hopefully have some fun stuff for you soon. Ciao!

Going Away For A While

Hey everyone! I have been keeping very busy lately, so much so that I haven't had the time or energy, so here's a bunch of new images for you all at once.
The gang. As you can see when I took this picture the giraffe didn't have spots on her right arm yet.
Christos Potamus gets new eyes. You can see a never-finished character behind him.
Here's a dead pigeon for the short, "The Walk."You can see he is VERY small.
Here's a waitress that seems to be a rat. Gross.
I'll be out of town for three weeks for my wedding, honeymoon and some other stuff so it may be a while until I post again. Until then, if you're craving some good claymation blogging, check out my buddies JRiggity and Pram Maven Films.
http://justinrasch.blogspot.com/
http://www.prammavenfilms.blogspot.com
They've got some really cool stuff goin' on. Okay, I'll miss you all and can't wait to get back to work on the project. CIAO!!!

Fox & Calf Sketches

Hey, hey! Hope everyone had a great weekend! I didn't do anything worth posting over the weekend so I thought I would share an early character design sketch so you can see what the clay characters came from. Lot's of times the characters that I design in 2-D don't look as good in 3-D, but these guys definitly look better. Hopefully gonna build some armeratures today, so I will keep ou posted!

One Buggy Evening

I’m going to show you this picture of my “fat-bug” prototype for the sole purpose of tying it in with what I really want to talk about. So, here it is, it’s too far from my original design, so I’m going to try to make it more like my drawing. Okay, glad that’s over. Anyway, moving on to what’s really important, most of you have been following my adventures of finding millipedes in my studio bathroom and stuff like that (for you newcomers; I just moved up to the mountains to animate and there are certain aspects of country-life that a San Franciscan like me just isn’t used to). So until yesterday I had only seen three millepedes up her (giant ones), two of which were in my studio bathroom. Yesterday night though, as I was walking home I saw four more, from large to baby-size. In one night I more than doubled my millipede count. Well, tonight there were two tiny baby ones on the studio wall, way smaller than the tiny babies I saw last night. Then, on my way home tonight I saw 12 more! They were all out and about having a grand ol’ time, they must like night walks like me. One of the twelve was distinctly different than the others, it was white with bubbly red stripes. Very pretty. I thought I saw a thirteenth one, but it was just a slug. Okay, before I go into the second half of my story, I would like to preface it with this: I am not afraid of bugs. I like bugs. I don’t get scared when yellow jackets attack me at a picnic, just annoyed, I’ve had ants crawl in my bed during the rainy season and have been too sleepy to care. Today I even walked through a swarm of mating stink bugs and didn’t flinch, but I am deathly afraid of spiders. My arachnophobia is pathetic. Well, tonight I got pretty shaken up when I met my first pair of wild scorpions. Scorpions have never bothered me because I’ve only ever seen them in captivity (pet shops, aquariums, etc.). But these two freaked the crap out of me. I debated stepping on them, but I thought I had heard that scorpions can sting you through your shoes, so I kept my distance. I couldn’t believe how shook up I was. My legs got really weak and I found the rest of my ten minute uphill walk home harder than usual. So needless to say, I have the heebie-jeebies, and I’m seriously rethinking this whole work until the middle of the night thing. Maybe I should start earlier so I can come home while it’s bright out. Anyway, now that you all think I’m so pathetic, I’ll say good night. Good night.

Catch Up

Hey, hey! Sorry again for another long period without updates. But don't worry, I haven't been un-productive. I've been working on various aspects of the animation process, not all of it is sculpting and moving the characters around. In my next post I'll let you know what I spent most of the time on, but for now I'll share a couple more rough sketches. First is a bug concept design for my next piece. I really think this could be a fun one to animate.



Next is an early character design concept for a short I may do after my current project. I know it's way down the road, but when you start to get ideas you need to put them down. I have a bazillion more sketches, but I don't want to give it all away right now.




Anyway, I've also been preparing some sets, I'll be making trees, dirt, grass, flowers and all sorts of other things for the environments the characters will be in. I hope to be animating a week from today, so that will be a lot of set-up, lets hope I can do it. Okay, I'll be back soon with more about this current, un-named film.

Crude Sketches

Usually when I come up with any type of character idea or visual design, I scribble it down really fast to get it out of my head, and then later I might flesh the ideas out more. Here's a couple of the really rough sketches I've drawn for this next project. By the way, I don't have a name for this animation yet. Does anyone have a suggestion? I know non of you know anything about the piece, but I'll take what I can get. There's no way in Hell I'm going with "Untitled." That's the stupidest crap ever.

Frog Family Concept Art

For those of you who don’t know, I’m spending the next four months up here in the wilderness animating. Over the years I have had a lot of ideas for shorts that I never got around to animating, so I’m hoping these next few months will allow me to get it out of my system. The first project I’m working on is a short called “Frog Family,” and it’s a concept that’s been floating around in my head for the last few years. The film will run about 1 and a half minutes and stars three frog characters. Of course I use the word “frog” loosely, as they aren’t really frogs. Like my previous shorts, “Beautiful” and “Happiness,” this will feature critters that are not of this world. Usually when I design creatures, I try not to make them too abstract or alien, I prefer to keep them mostly familiar. These creatures are based on frogs, but with a few variations.





The picture above was my original concept design. I love the look of these guys a lot, but decided to go a different direction. Maybe I’ll use this design on some other characters in the future.





I eventually decided to give the back-half of their bodies a slug look, to allow for some comical movement, and I replaced the catfish barbels (whiskers) with ears.